The present invention generally relates to telecommunication equipment and more specifically to apparatus and methods for providing a plurality of logical telecommunication nodes in a telecommunication node.
A telecommunications node is designed to facilitate connections between two or more network end devices. The end devices may be devices such as telephones, computers, point of sale terminals, and other similar or related equipment. The end devices may be directly connected to the node or may be attached to other equipment that is subsequently connected to the node.
A telecommunications node is typically made from several components or subassemblies. For example, a telecommunications node includes a shelf with several slots for data processors that transfer data for the connections. Also, the data processors are controlled by a single control processor that manages the connections that are transferring data through the data processors.
A single telecommunications node is typically associated with one service provider. A service provider includes any entity that transfers data using the telecommunication node. Thus, the data transferred through the telecommunications node is associated with only that service provider. When the service provider does not transfer enough data in order to fully use the data processors in the telecommunications node, the node is not being used efficiently because data from other service providers cannot be transferred by the unused data processors.
Also, because a single control processor is typically found in one slot of the telecommunications node, it is not possible to use multiple control processors for the data processors. Typically, the control processor can only manage connections for a single service provider; thus, the telecommunications node is limited to processing data for a single service provider.